Want to write a book about facing death? Climb a mountain!

Updated March 6, 2023
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The last season /
Blehm, Eric.
Paper Book
Destined to become a classic of adventure literature, The Last Season examines the extraordinary life of legendary backcountry ranger Randy Morgenson and his mysterious disappearance in California's unforgiving Sierra Nevada--mountains as perilous as they are beautiful. Eric Blehm's masterful work...
K2, triumph and tragedy
Curran, Jim.
Paper Book
K2, "the savage mountain", is the second-highest peak in the world - and the most difficult to cllimb. In 1986, it was the site of both dazzling triumph and great loss as twenty-seven men and women reached the top but thirteen died trying. Tto this day it ramains the single greatest tragedy in the...
The next Everest : surviving the mountain's deadliest day and finding the resilience to climb again
Davidson, Jim (Professional speaker)
Paper Book
One of Atlas & Boots' Top 10 Adventure Travel Books of 2021 A dramatic account of the deadly earthquake on Everest--and a return to reach the summit. On April 25, 2015, Jim Davidson was climbing Mount Everest when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake released...
The ledge :
Davidson, Jim
Paper Book
"My eyes travel up the frozen walls. I figure it is eighty feet up to the sunlight. The walls above me climb up at about eighty degrees, then they go dead vertical, and then, higher up, they overhang. It is as if I am looking out from the belly of a beast, its jagged white teeth interlocking...
The other side of Everest : climbing the north face through the killer storm
Dickinson, Matt.
Paper Book
May 1996 began like most other climbing seasons on Mount Everest. The arrival of spring brought the usual pre-monsoon period, with teams of hopeful mountaineers ready to reach for the roof of the world. Among the dozens of climbers were Jon Krakauer and Anatoli Boukreev (who would both later write...
Dead Mountain : the untold true story of the Dyatlov Pass incident
Eichar, Donnie
Paper Book
A New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller - What happened that night on Dead Mountain? The mystery of Dead Mountain: In February 1959, a group of nine experienced hikers in the Russian Ural Mountains died mysteriously on an elevation known as Dead Mountain. Eerie aspects...
Deep survival :
Gonzales, Laurence,
Paper Book
After her plane crashes, a seventeen-year-old girl spends eleven days walking through the Peruvian jungle. Against all odds, with no food, shelter, or equipment, she gets out. A better-equipped group of adult survivors of the same crash sits down and dies. What makes the difference?
Deep survival :
Gonzales, Laurence,
Paper Book
After her plane crashes, a seventeen-year-old girl spends eleven days walking through the Peruvian jungle. Against all odds, with no food, shelter, or equipment, she gets out. A better-equipped group of adult survivors of the same crash sits down and dies. What makes the difference?
Deep survival : who lives, who dies, and why : true stories of miraculous endurance and sudden death
Gonzales, Laurence
Paper Book
After her plane crashes, a seventeen-year-old girl spends eleven days walking through the Peruvian jungle. Against all odds, with no food, shelter, or equipment, she gets out. A better-equipped group of adult survivors of the same crash sits down and dies. What makes the difference?
After the wind : 1996 Everest tragedy : one survivor's story
Kasischke, Louis W.
Paper Book
In the spring of 1996, Lou Kasischke joined renowned climber Rob Hall's Mount Everest expedition. When he said goodbye to his wife, Sandy, he knew he faced major physical and mental challenges against rock, snow, ice, avalanches, and extreme high altitude to climb the highest mountain in the world....
Into thin air :
Krakauer, Jon
Paper Book
When Jon Krakauer reached the summit of Mt. Everest in the early afternoon of May 10, 1996, he hadn't slept in fifty-seven hours and was reeling from the brain-altering effects of oxygen depletion. As he turned to begin his long, dangerous descent from 29,028 feet, twenty other climbers were still...
Between a rock and a hard place
Ralston, Aron.
Paper Book
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND BASIS FOR THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE 127 HOURS One of the most extraordinary survival stories ever told--Aron Ralston's searing account of his six days trapped in one of the most remote spots in America, and how one inspired act of...
Alive : sixteen men, seventy-two days, and insurmountable odds-- the classic adventure of survival in the Andes
Read, Piers Paul
Paper Book
#1 New York Times Bestseller "No one will come away unmoved by the book, and no one will be able to put it down.... There is no way of reading Alive without a heightened sense of one's own life and its value." -- New Republic Sixteen Men, Seventy-Two Days, and...
Alive; the story of the Andes survivors
Read, Piers Paul
Paper Book
"A classic in the literature of survival." --Newsweek On October 12, 1972, a Uruguayan Air Force plane carrying a team of rugby players crashed in the remote, snow-peaked Andes Mountains. Ten weeks later, only 16 of the 45 passengers were found alive. This is the story of...
Touching the void
Simpson, Joe
Paper Book
Joe Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, had just reached the top of a 21,000-foot peak in the Andes when disaster struck. Simpson plunged off the vertical face of an ice ledge, breaking his leg. In the hours that followed, darkness fell and a blizzard raged as Yates tried to lower his...
K2 : life and death on the world's most dangerous mountain
Viesturs, Ed.
Paper Book
The deadly history of the world's most-dangerous mountain illuminates the many lessons both climbers and non-climbers alike can glean from K2, the aptly named Savage Mountain.
Left for Dead My Journey Home from Everest
Weathers, Beck.
Paper Book
I am neither churchly nor a particularly spiritual person, but I can tell you that some force within me rejected death at the last moment and then guided me, blind and stumbling—quite literally a dead man walking—into camp and the shaky start of my return to life. On May 10, 1996, nine...
One mountain thousand summits : the untold story of tragedy and true heroism on K2
Wilkinson, Freddie.
Paper Book
In the early-morning hours of August 1, 2008, more than two dozen men readied in the starry darkness for their final ascent to the summit of K2, the world's second-highest mountain.
Buried in the sky : the extraordinary story of the Sherpa climbers on K2's deadliest day
Zuckerman, Peter.
Paper Book
When Edmund Hillary first conquered Mt. Everest, Sherpa Tenzing Norgay was at his side. Indeed, for as long as Westerners have been climbing the Himalaya, Sherpas have been the unsung heroes in the background. In August 2008, when eleven climbers lost their lives on K2, the world's most dangerous...

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